CHAPTER XIIIDouglas Falloden rode home rapidly after parting from Connie. Passion, impatience, bitter regret consumed him. He suffered, and could not endure to suffer. That life, which had grown up with him as a flattering and obsequious friend, obeying all his whims, yielding to all his desires, should now have turned upon him in this traitorous way, inflicting such monstrous reprisals and rebuffs, roused in him the astonishment and resentment natural to such a temperament.He, too, drew rein for a moment at the spot where Connie had looked out over Flood Castle and its valley. The beautiful familiar sight produced in him now only a mingling of pain and irritation. The horrid thing was settled, decided. There was no avoiding ruin, or saving his inheritance. Then why these long delays, these endless discomforts and humiliations? The lawyers prolonged things because it paid them to do so; and his poor father wavered and hesitated from day to day, because physically and morally he was breaking up. If only his father and mother would have cleared out of Flood at once—they were spending money they could not possibly afford in keeping it up—and had left him, Douglas, to do the odious things, pay the creditors, sell the place, and sweep up the whole vast mess, with the help of the lawyers, it would have been infinitely best. His own will felt itself strong and determined enough for any such task. But Sir Arthur, in his strange, broken state, could not be brought to make decisions, and would often, after days of gloom and depression, pass into a fool’s mood, when he seemed for the moment to forget and ignore the whole tragedy. Since he and Douglas had agreed with the trustees to sell the pictures, that sheer bankruptcy might just be escaped, Sir Arthur had been extravagantly cheerful. Why not have their usual shooting-party after all?—one last fling before the end! He supposed he should end his days in a suburban villa, but till they left Flood the flag should be kept flying.During all this time of tension indeed, he was a great trial to his son. Douglas’s quick and proud intelligence was amazed to find his father so weak and so incompetent under misfortune. All his boyish life he had looked up to the slender, handsome man, whom he himself so much resembled, on a solider, more substantial scale, as the most indulgent of fathers, the princeliest of hosts, the best of shots and riders, chief indeed of the Falloden clan and all its glories, who, like other monarchs, could do no wrong.But now the glamour which must always attend the central figure of such a scene withered at the touch of poverty and misfortune. And, in its absence, Douglas found himself dealing with an enthusiastic, vain, self-confident being, who had ruined himself and his son by speculations, often so childishly foolish that Douglas could not think of them without rage. Intellectually, he could only despise and condemn his father.Yet the old bond held. Till he met Constance Bledlow, he had cared only for his own people, and among them, preëminently, for his father. In this feeling, family pride and natural affection met together. The family pride had been sorely shaken, the affection, steeped in a painful, astonished pity, remained. For the first time in his life Douglas had been sleeping badly. Interminable dreams pursued him, in which the scene in Marmion quad, his last walk with Constance along the Cherwell, and the family crash, were all intermingled, with the fatuity natural to dreams. And his wakings from them were almost equally haunted by the figures of Constance and Radowitz, and by a miserable yearning over his father, which no one who saw his hard, indifferent bearing during the day could possible have guessed. “Poor—poor old fellow!”—he had once or twice raised himself from his bed in the early morning, as though answering this cry in his ears, only to find that he himself had uttered it.He had told his people nothing of Constance Bledlow beyond the bare fact of his acquaintance with her, first at Cannes, and then at Oxford. And they knew nothing of the Radowitz incident. Very few people indeed were aware of the true history of that night which had marred an artist’s life. The college authorities had been painfully stirred by the reports which had reached them; but Radowitz himself had written to the Head maintaining that the whole thing was an accident and a frolic, and insisting that no public or official notice should be taken of it, a fact which had not prevented the Head from writing severely to Falloden, Meyrick, and Robertson, or the fellows of the college from holding a college meeting, even in the long vacation, to discuss what measures should be taken in the October term to put down and stamp out ragging.Falloden had replied to the Head’s letter expressing his “profound regret” for the accident to Otto Radowitz, and declaring that nobody in the row had the smallest intention of doing him any bodily harm.What indeed had anybody but himself to do with his own malignant and murderous impulse towards Radowitz? It had had no casual connection whatever with the accident itself. And who but he—and Constance Bledlow—was entitled to know that, while the others were actuated by nothing but the usual motives of a college rag, quickened by too much supping, he himself had been impelled by a mad jealousy of Radowitz, and a longing to humiliate one who had humiliated him? All the same he hated himself now for what he had said to Constance on their last walk. It had been a mean and monstrous attempt to shift the blame from his own shoulders to hers; and his sense of honour turned from the recollection of it in disgust.How pale she had looked, beside that gate, in the evening light—how heavy-eyed! No doubt she was seeing Radowitz constantly, and grieving over him; blaming herself, indeed, as he, Falloden, had actually invited her to do. With fresh poignancy, he felt himself an outcast from her company. No doubt they sometimes talked of him—his bitter pride guessed how!—she, and Sorell, and Radowitz together. Was Sorell winning her? He had every chance. Falloden, in his sober senses, knew perfectly well that she was not in love with Radowitz; though no one could say what pity might do with a girl so sensitive and sympathetic.Well, it was all over!—no good thinking about it. He confessed to himself that his whole relation to Constance Bledlow had been one blunder from beginning to end. His own arrogance and self-confidence with regard to her, appeared to him, as he looked back upon them, not so much a fault as an absurdity. In all his dealings with her he had been a conceited fool, and he had lost her. “But I had to be ruined to find it out!” he thought, capable at last of some ironic reflection on himself.He set his horse to a gallop along the moorland turf. Let him get home, and do his dreary tasks in that great house which was already becoming strange to him; which, in a sense, he was now eager to see the last of. On the morrow, the possible buyer of the pictures—who, by the way, was not an American at all, but a German shipping millionaire from Bremen—was coming down, with an “expert.” Hang the expert! Falloden, who was to deal with the business, promised himself not to be intimidated by him, or his like; and amid his general distress and depression, his natural pugnacity took pleasure in the thought of wrestling with the pair.When he rode up to the Flood gateway everything appeared as usual. The great lawns in front of the house were as immaculately kept as ever, and along the shrubberies which bordered the park there were gardeners still at work pegging down a broad edge of crimson rambler roses, which seemed to hold the sunset. Falloden observed them. “Who’s paying for them?” he thought. At the front door two footmen received him; the stately head butler stood with a detached air in the background.“Sir Arthur’s put off dinner half an hour, sir. He’s in the library.”Douglas went in search of his father. He found him smoking and reading a novel, apparently half asleep.“You’re very late, Duggy. Never mind. We’ve put off dinner.”“I found Sprague had a great deal to say.”Sprague was the subagent living on the further edge of the estate. Douglas had spent the day with him, going into the recent valuation of an important group of farms.“I dare say,” said Sir Arthur, lying back in his armchair. “I’m afraid I don’t want to hear it.”Douglas sat down opposite his father. He was dusty and tired, and there were deep pits tinder his eyes.“It will make a difference of a good many thousands to us, father, if that valuation is correct,” he said shortly.“Will it? I can’t help it. I can’t go into it. I can’t keep the facts and figures in my head, Duggy. I’ve done too much of them this last ten years. My brain gives up. But you’ve got a splendid head, Duggy—wonderful for your age. I leave it to you, my son. Do the best you can.”Douglas looked at his father a moment in silence. Sir Arthur was sitting near the window, and had just turned on an electric light beside him. Douglas was struck by something strange in his father’s attitude and look—a curious irresponsibility and remoteness. The deep depression of their earlier weeks together had apparently disappeared. This mood of easy acquiescence—almost levity—was becoming permanent. Yet Douglas could not help noticing afresh the physical change in a once splendid man—how shrunken his father was, and how grey. And he was only fifty-two. But the pace at which he had lived for years, first in the attempt to double his already great wealth by adventures all over the world, and latterly in his frantic efforts to escape the consequences of these adventures, had rapidly made an old man of him. The waste and pity—and at the same time the irreparableness of it all—sent a shock, intolerably chill and dreary, through the son’s consciousness. He was too young to bear it patiently. He hastily shook it off.“Those picture chaps are coming to-morrow,” he said, as he got up, meaning to go and dress.Sir Arthur put his hands behind his head, and didn’t reply immediately. He was looking at a picture on the panelled wall opposite, on which the lingering western glow still shone through the mullioned window on his right. It was an enchanting Romney—a young woman in a black dress holding a spaniel in her arms. The picture breathed a distinction, a dignity beyond the reach of Romney’s ordinary mood. It represented Sir Arthur’s great-grandmother, on his father’s side, a famous Irish beauty of the day.“Wonder what they’ll give me for that,” he Said quietly, pointing to it. “My father always said it was the pick. You remember the story that she—my great-grandmother—once came across Lady Hamilton in Romney’s studio, and Emma Hamilton told Romney afterwards that at last he’d found a sitter handsomer than herself. It’s a winner. You inherit her eyes, Douglas, and her colour. What’s it worth?”“Twenty thousand perhaps.” Douglas’s voice had the cock-sureness that goes with new knowledge. “I’ve been looking into some of the recent prices.”“Twenty thousand!” said Sir Arthur, musing. “And Romney got seventy-five for it, I believe—I have the receipt somewhere. I shall miss that picture. What shall I get for it? A few shabby receipts—for nothing. My creditors will get something out of her—mercifully. But as for me—I might as well have cut her into strips. She looks annoyed—as though she knew I’d thrown her away. I believe she was a vixen.”“I must go and change, father,” said Douglas.“Yes, yes, dear boy, go and change. Douglas, you think there’ll be a few thousands over, don’t you, besides your mother’s settlement, when it’s all done?”“Precious few,” said Douglas, pausing on his way to the door. “Don’t count upon anything, father. If we do well to-morrow, there may be something.”“Four or five thousand?—ten, even? You know, Duggy, many men have built up fortunes again on no more. A few weeks ago I had all sorts of ideas.”“That’s no good,” said Douglas, with emphasis. “For God’s sake, father, don’t begin again.”Sir Arthur nodded silently, and Douglas left the room.His father remained sitting where his son had left him, his fingers drumming absently on the arms of his chair, his half-shut eyes wandering over the splendid garden outside, with its statues and fountains, and its masses of roses, all fused in the late evening glow.The door opened softly. His wife came in.Lady Laura had lost her old careless good humour. Her fair complexion had changed for the worse; there were lines in her white forehead, and all her movements had grown nervous and irritable. But her expression as she stood by her husband was one of anxious though rather childish affection.“How are you, Arthur? Did you get a nap?”“A beauty!” said her husband, smiling at her, and taking her hand. “I dreamt about Raby, and the first time I saw you there in the old Duke’s day. What a pretty thing you were, Laura!—like a monthly rose, all pink.”He patted her hand; Lady Laura shrugged her shoulders rather pettishly.“It’s no good thinking about that now.... You’re not really going to have a shooting-party, Arthur? I do wish you wouldn’t!”“But of course I am!” said her husband, raising himself with alacrity. “The grouse must be shot, and the estate is not sold yet! I’ve asked young Meyrick, and Lord Charles, and Robert Vere. You can ask the Charlevilles, dear, and if my lady doesn’t come I shan’t break my heart. Then there are five or six of the neighbours of course. And no whining and whimpering! The last shoot at Flood shall be a good one! The keeper tells me the birds are splendid!”Lady Laura’s lips trembled.“You forget what Duggy and I shall be feeling all the time, Arthur. It’s very hard on us.”“No—nonsense!” The voice was good-humouredly impatient. “Take it calmly, dear. What do places matter? Come to the Andes with me. Duggy must work for his fellowship; Nelly can stay with some of our relations; and we can send the children to school. Or what do you say to a winter in California? Let’s have a second honeymoon—see something of the world before we die. This English country gentleman business ties one terribly. Life in one’s own house is so jolly one doesn’t want anything else. But now, if we’re going to be uprooted, let’s enjoy it!”“Enjoy it!” repeated his wife bitterly. “How can you say such things, Arthur?”She walked to the window, and stood looking out at the garden with its grandiose backing of hill and climbing wood, and the strong broken masses of the cedar trees—the oldest it was said in England—which flanked it on either side. Lady Laura was, in truth, only just beginning to realise their misfortunes. It had seemed to her impossible that such wealth as theirs should positively give out; that there should be nothing left but her miserable two thousand a year; that something should not turn up to save them from this preposterous necessity of leaving Flood. When Douglas came home, she had thrown herself on her clever son, confident that he would find a way out, and his sombre verdict on the hopelessness of the situation had filled her with terror. How could they live with nothing but the London house to call their own? How could they? Why couldn’t they sell off the land, and keep the house and the park? Then they would still be the Fallodens of Flood. It was stupid—simply stupid—to be giving up everything like this.So day by day she wearied her husband and son by her lamentations, which were like those of some petted animal in distress. And every now and then she had moments of shrinking terror—of foreboding—fearing she knew not what. Her husband seemed to her changed. Why wouldn’t he take her advice? Why wouldn’t Douglas listen to her? If only her father had been alive, or her only brother, they could have helped her. But she had nobody—nobody—and Arthur and Douglas would do this horrible thing.Her husband watched her, half smiling—his shrunken face flushed, his eyes full of a curious excitement. She had grown stout in the last five years, poor Laura!—she had lost her youth before the crash came. But she was still very pleasant to look upon, with her plentiful fair hair, and her pretty mouth—her instinct for beautiful dress—and her soft appealing manner. He suddenly envisaged her in black—with a plain white collar and cuffs, and something white on her hair. Then vehemently shaking off his thought he rose and went to her.“Dear—didn’t Duggy want you to ask somebody for the shoot? I thought I heard him mention somebody?’“That was ages ago. He doesn’t want anybody asked now,” said Lady Laura resentfully. “He can’t understand why you want a party.”“I thought he said something about Lady Constance Bledlow?”“That was in June!” cried Lady Laura. “He certainly wouldn’t let me ask her, as things are.”“Have you any idea whether he may have wanted to marry her?”“He was very much taken with her. But how can he think about marrying, Arthur? You do say the strangest things. And after Dagnall’s behaviour too.”“Raison de plus!That girl has money, my dear, and will have more, when the old aunts depart this life. If you want Duggy still to go into Parliament, and to be able to do anything for the younger ones, you’ll keep an eye on her.”Lady Laura, however, was too depressed to welcome the subject. The gong rang for dinner, and as they were leaving the room, Sir Arthur said—“There are two men coming down to-morrow to see the pictures, Laura. If I were you, I should keep out of the way.”She gave him a startled look. But they were already on the threshold of the dining-room, where a butler and two footmen waited. The husband and wife took their places opposite each other in the stately panelled room, which contained six famous pictures. Over the mantelpiece was a half-length Gainsborough, one of the loveliest portraits in the world, a miracle of shining colour and languid grace, the almond eyes with their intensely black pupils and black eyebrows looking down, as it seemed, contemptuously upon this after generation, so incurably lacking in its own supreme refinement. Opposite Lady Laura was a full-length Van Dyck of the Genoese period, a mother in stiff brocade and ruff, with an adorable child at her knee; and behind her chair was the great Titian of the house, a man in armour, subtle and ruthless as the age which bred him, his hawk’s eye brooding on battles past, and battles to come, while behind him stretched the Venetian lagoon, covered dimly with the fleet of the great republic which had employed him. Facing the Gainsborough hung one of Cuyp’s few masterpieces—a mass of shipping on the Scheldt, with Dordrecht in the background. For play and interplay of everything that delights the eye—light and distance, transparent water, and hovering clouds, the lustrous brown of fishing boats, the beauty of patched sails and fluttering flags—for both literary and historic suggestion, Dutch art had never done better. Impressionists and post-impressionists came down occasionally to stay at Flood—for Sir Arthur liked to play Mæcenas—and were allowed to deal quite frankly with the pictures, as they wandered round the room at dessert, cigarette in hand, pointing out the absurdities of the Cuyp and the Titian. Their host, who knew that he possessed in that room what the collectors of two continents desired, who felt them buzzing outside like wasps against a closed window, took a special pleasure in the scoffs of the advanced crew. They supplied an agreeable acid amid a general adulation that bored him.To-night the presence of the pictures merely increased the excitement which was the background of his mind. He talked about them a good deal at dinner, wondering secretly all the time, what it would be like to do without them—without Flood—without his old butler there—without everything.Douglas came down late, and was very silent and irresponsive. He too was morbidly conscious of the pictures, though he wished his father wouldn’t talk about them. He was conscious of everything that meant money—of his mother’s pearls for instance, which she wore every evening without thinking about them. If he did well with the pictures on the morrow she might, perhaps, justly keep them, as a dowry for Nelly. But if not—He found himself secretly watching his mother, wondering how she would take it all when she really understood—what sort of person she would turn out to be in the new life to which they were all helplessly tending.After dinner, he followed his father into the smoking room.“Where is the catalogue of the pictures, father?”“In the library, Duggy, to the right hand of the fire-place. I paid a fellow a very handsome sum for making it—a fellow who knew a lot—a real expert. But, of course, when we published it, all the other experts tore it to pieces.”“If I bring it, will you go through it with me?”Sir Arthur shrugged his shoulders.“I don’t think I will, Duggy. The catalogue—there are a great many marginal notes on it which the published copies haven’t got—will tell you all I know about them, and a great deal more. And you’ll find a loose paper at the beginning, on which I’ve noted down the prices people have offered me for them from time to time. Like their impudence, I used to think! I leave it to you, old boy. I know it’s a great responsibility for a young fellow like you. But the fact is—I’m pumped. Besides, when they make their offer, we can talk it over. I think I’ll go and play a game of backgammon with your mother.”He threw away his cigar, and Douglas, angry at what seemed to him his father’s shirking, stood stiffly aside to let him pass. Sir Arthur opened the door. He seemed to walk uncertainly, and he stooped a great deal. From the hall outside, he looked back at his son.“I think I shall see M’Clintock next time I’m in town, Duggy. I’ve had some queer pains across my chest lately.”“Indigestion?” said Douglas. His tone was casual.“Perhaps. Oh, they’re nothing. But it’s best to take things in time.”He walked away, leaving his son in a state of seething irritation. Extraordinary that a man could think of trumpery ailments at such a time! It was unlike his father too, whose personal fitness and soundness, whether on the moors, in the hunting field, or in any other sort of test, had always been triumphantly assumed by his family, as part of the general brilliance of Sir Arthur’s role in life.Douglas sombrely set himself to study the picture catalogue, and sat smoking and making notes till nearly midnight. Having by that time accumulated a number of queries to which answers were required, he went in search of his father. He found him in the drawing-room, still playing backgammon with Lady Laura.“Oh Duggy, I’m so tired!” cried his mother plaintively, as soon as he appeared. “And your father will go on. Do come and take my place.”Sir Arthur rose.“No, no, dear—we’ve had enough. Many thanks. If you only understood its points, backgammon is really an excellent game. Well, Duggy, ready to go to bed?”“When I’ve asked you a few questions, father.”Lady Laura escaped, having first kissed her son with tearful eyes. Sir Arthur checked a yawn, and tried to answer Douglas’s enquiries. But very soon he declared that he had no more to say, and couldn’t keep awake.Douglas watched him mounting the famous staircase of the house, with its marvellousrampe, bought under the Bourbon Restoration from one of the historic chateaux of France; and, suddenly, the young man felt his heart gripped. Was that shrunken, stooping figure really his father? Of course they must have M’Clintock at once—and get him away—to Scotland or abroad.“The two gentlemen are in the red drawing-room, sir!” Douglas and his father were sitting together in the library, after lunch, on the following afternoon, when the butler entered.“Damn them!” said Sir Arthur under his breath. Then he got up, smiling, as the servant disappeared. “Well, Duggy, now’s your chance. I’m a brute not to come and help you, my boy. But I’ve made such a mess of driving the family coach, you’d really better take a turn. I shall go out for an hour. Then you can come and report to me.”Douglas went into the red drawing-room, one of the suite of rooms dating from the early seventeenth century which occupied the western front of the house. As he entered, he saw two men at the farther end closely examining a large Constable, of the latest “palette-knife” period, which hung to the left of the fire-place. One of the men was short, very stout, with a fringe of grey hair round his bald head, a pair of very shrewd and sparkling black eyes, a thick nose, full lips, and a double chin. He wore spectacles, and was using in addition, a magnifying glass with which he was examining the picture. Beside him stood a thin, slightly-bearded man, cadaverous in colour, who, with his hands in his pockets, was holding forth in a nonchalant, rather patronising voice.Both of them turned at Douglas’s entrance, surveying the son of the house with an evident and eager curiosity.“You are, I suppose, Mr. Douglas Falloden?” said the short man, speaking perfect English, though with a slight German accent. “Your father is not able to see us?”“My father will be pleased to see you, when you have been the round of the pictures,” said Douglas stiffly. “He deputes me to show you what we have.”The short man laughed.“I expect we know what you have almost as well as you. Let me introduce Mr. Miklos.”Douglas bowed, so did the younger man. He was, as Douglas already knew, a Hungarian by birth, formerly an official in one of the museums of Budapest, then at Munich, and now an “expert” at large, greatly in demand as the adviser of wealthy men entering the field of art collecting, and prepared to pay almost anything for success in one of the most difficult and fascinatingchassesthat exist.“I see you have given this room almost entirely to English pictures,” said Mr. Miklos politely. “A fine Constable!”—he pointed to the picture they had just been considering—“but not, I think, entirely by the master?”[Illustration: ]Herr Schwarz was examining a picture with a magnifying glass when Falloden entered“My great-grandfather bought it from Constable himself,” said Douglas. “It has never been disputed by any one.”Mr. Miklos did not reply, but he shook his head with a slight smile, and walked away towards a Turner, a fine landscape of the middle period, hanging close to the Constable. He peered into it short-sightedly, with his strong glasses.“A pity that it has been so badly relined,” he said presently, to Douglas, pointing to it.“You think so? Its condition is generally thought to be excellent. My father was offered eight thousand for it last year by the Berlin Museum.”Douglas was now apparently quite at his ease. With his thumbs in the armholes of his white waistcoat, he strolled along beside the two buyers, holding his own with both of them, thanks to his careful study of the materials for the history of the collection possessed by his father. The elder man, a Bremen ship-owner,—one Wilhelm Schwarz—who had lately made a rapid and enormous fortune out of the Argentine trade, and whose chief personal ambition it now was to beat the New York and Paris collectors, in the great picture game, whatever it might cost, was presently forced to take some notice of the handsome curly-headed youth in the perfectly fitting blue serge suit, whose appearance as the vendor, or the vendor’s agent, had seemed to him, at first, merely one more instance of English aristocratic stupidity.As a matter of fact, Herr Schwarz was simply dazzled by the contents of Flood Castle. He had never dreamt that such virgin treasures still existed in this old England, till Miklos, instructed by the Falloden lawyer, had brought the list of the pictures to his hotel, a few days before this visit. And now he found it extremely difficult to conceal his excitement and delight, or to preserve, in the presence of this very sharp-eyed young heir, the proper “don’t care” attitude of the buyer. He presently left the “running down” business almost entirely to Miklos, being occupied in silent and feverish speculations as to how much he could afford to spend, and a passion of covetous fear lest somehow A——, or Z——, or K——, the leading collectors of the moment, should even yet forestall him, early and “exclusive” as Miklos assured him their information had been.They passed along through the drawing-rooms, and the whole wonderful series of family portraits, Reynolds’, Lawrences, Gainsboroughs, Romneys, Hoppners, looked down, unconscious of their doom, upon the invaders, and on the son of the house, so apparently unconcerned. But Douglas was very far from unconcerned. He had no artistic gift, and he had never felt or pretended any special interest in the pictures. They were part of Flood, and Flood was the inseparable adjunct of the Falloden race. When his father had first mooted the sale of them, Douglas had assented without much difficulty. If other things went, why not they?But now that he was in the thick of the business, he found, all in a moment, that he had to set his teeth to see it through. A smarting sense of loss—loss hateful and irreparable, cutting away both the past and the future—burnt deep into his mind, as he followed in the track of the sallow and depreciatory Miklos or watched the podgy figure of Herr Schwarz, running from side to side as picture after picture caught his eye. The wincing salesman saw himself as another Charles Surface; but now that the predicament was his own it was no longer amusing. These fair faces, these mothers and babies of his own blood, these stalwart men, fighters by sea and land, these grave thinkers and churchmen, they thronged about him transformed, become suddenly alien and hostile, a crowd of threatening ghosts, the outraged witnesses of their own humiliation. “For what are you selling us?”—they seemed to say. “Because some one, who was already overfed, must needs grab at a larger mess of pottage—and we must pay! Unkind! degenerate!”Presently, after the English drawing-rooms, and the library, with its one Romney, came the French room, with its precious Watteaus, its Latours, its two brilliant Nattiers. And here Herr Schwarz’s coolness fairly deserted him. He gave little shrieks of pleasure, which brought a frown to the face of his companion, who was anxious to point out that a great deal of the Watteau was certainly pupil-work, that the Latours were not altogether “convincing” and the Nattiers though extremely pretty, “superficial.” But Herr Schwarz brushed him aside.“Nein, nein, lieber freund! Dat Nattier is as fine as anything at Potsdam. Dat I must have!” And he gazed in ecstasy at the opulent shoulders, the rounded forms, and gorgeous jewelled dress of an unrivalled Madame de Pompadour, which had belonged to her brother, the Marquis de Marigny.“You will have all or nothing, my good sir!” thought Falloden, and bided his time.Meanwhile Miklos, perceiving that his patron was irretrievably landed and considering that his own “expert” dignity had been sufficiently saved, relaxed into enthusiasm and small talk. Only in the later Italian rooms did his critical claws again allow themselves to scratch. A small Leonardo, the treasure of the house, which had been examined and written about by every European student of Milanese art for half a century, was suavely pronounced—“A Da Predis, of course, but a very nice one!” A Bellini became a Rondinelli; and the names of a dozen obscure, and lately discovered painters, freely applied to the Tintorets, Mantegnas and Cimas on the walls, produced such an effect on Herr Schwarz that he sat down open-mouthed on the central ottoman, staring first at the pictures and then at the speaker; not knowing whether to believe or to doubt. Falloden stood a little apart, listening, a smile on his handsome mouth.“We should know nothing about Rondinelli,” said Miklos at last, sweetly—“but for the great Bode—”“Ach, Bode!” said Herr Schwarz, nodding his head in complacent recognition at the name of the already famous assistant-director of the Berlin Museum.Falloden laughed.“Dr. Bode was here last year. He told my father he thought the Bellini was one of the finest in existence.”Miklos changed countenance slightly.“Bode perhaps is a trifle credulous,” he said in an offended tone.But he went back again to the Bellini and examined it closely. Falloden, without waiting for his second thoughts, took Herr Schwarz into the dining-room.At the sight of the six masterpieces hanging on its walls, the Bremen ship-owner again lost his head. What miraculous good-fortune had brought him, ahead of all his rivals, into this still unravaged hive? He ran from side to side,—he grew red, perspiring, inarticulate. At last he sank down on a chair in front of the Titian, and when Miklos approached, delicately suggesting that the picture, though certainly fine, showed traces of one of the later pupils, possibly Molari, in certain parts, Herr Schwarz waved him aside.“Nein, nein!—Hold your tongue, my dear sir! Here must I judge for myself.”Then looking up to Falloden who stood beside him, smiling, almost reconciled to the vulgar, greedy little man by his collapse, he said abruptly—“How much, Mr. Falloden, for your father’s collection?”“You desire to buy the whole of it?” said Falloden coolly.“I desire to buy everything that I have seen,” said Herr Schwarz, breathing quickly. “Your solicitors gave me a list of sixty-five pictures. No, no, Miklos, go away!”—he waved his expert aside impatiently.“Those were the pictures on the ground floor,” said Falloden. “You have seen them all. You had better make your offer in writing, and I will take it to my father.”He fetched pen and paper from a side-table and put them before the excited German. Herr Schwarz wrinkled his face in profound meditation. His eyes almost disappeared behind his spectacles, then emerged sparkling.He wrote some figures on a piece of paper, and handed it to Douglas.Douglas laughed drily, and returned it.“You will hardly expect me to give my father the trouble of considering that.”Herr Schwarz puffed and blowed. He got up, and walked about excitedly. He lit a cigarette, Falloden politely helping him. Miklos advanced again.“I have, myself, made a very careful estimate—” he began, insinuatingly.“No, no, Miklos,—go away!—go away!” repeated Schwarz impatiently, almost walking over him. Miklos retreated sulkily.Schwarz took up the paper of figures, made an alteration, and handed it to Falloden.“It is madness,” he said—“sheer madness. But I have in me something of the poet—the Crusader.”Falloden’s look of slightly sarcastic amusement, as the little man breathlessly examined his countenance, threw the buyer into despair. Douglas put down the paper.“We gave you the first chance, Herr Schwarz. As you know, nobody is yet aware of our intentions to sell. But I shall advise my father to-night to let one or two of the dealers know.”“Ach, lieber Gott!” said Herr Schwarz, and walking away to the window, he stood looking into the rose-garden outside, making a curious whistling sound with his prominent lips, expressive, evidently, of extreme agitation.Falloden lit another cigarette, and offered one to Miklos.At the end of two or three minutes, Schwarz again amended the figures on the scrap of paper, and handed it sombrely to Falloden.“Dat is my last word.”Falloden glanced at it, and carelessly said—“On that I will consult my father.”He left the room.Schwarz and Miklos looked at each other.“What airs these English aristocrats give themselves,” said the Hungarian angrily—“even when they are beggars, like this young man!”Schwarz stood frowning, his hands in his pockets, legs apart. His agitation was calming down, and his more prudent mind already half regretted his impetuosity.“Some day—we shall teach them a lesson!” he said, under his breath, his eyes wandering over the rose-garden and the deer-park beyond. The rapidly growing docks of Bremen and Hamburg, their crowded shipping, the mounting tide of their business, came flashing into his mind—ran through it in a series of images. This England, with her stored wealth, and her command of the seas—must she always stand between Germany and her desires? He found himself at once admiring and detesting the English scene on which he looked. That so much good German money should have to go into English pockets for these ill-gotten English treasures! What a country to conquer—and to loot!“And they are mere children compared to us—silly, thick-headed children! Yet they have all the plums—everywhere.”Falloden came back. The two men turned eagerly.“My father thanks you for your offer, gentlemen. He is very sorry he is not able to see you as he hoped. He is not very well this afternoon. But I am to say that he will let you have an answer in twenty-four hours. Then if he agrees to your terms, the matter will have to go before the court. That, of course, our lawyers explained to you—”“That will not suit me at all!” cried Herr Schwarz. “As far as your father is concerned, my offer must be accepted—or rejected—now.”He struck his open hand on the polished mahogany of the table beside him.“Then I am very sorry you have had the trouble of coming down,” said Falloden politely. “Shall I order your carriage?”The great ship-owner stared at him. He was on the point of losing his temper, perhaps of withdrawing from his bargain, when over Falloden’s head he caught sight of the Titian and the play of light on its shining armour; of the Van Dyck opposite. He gave way helplessly; gripped at the same moment by his parvenu’s ambition, and by the genuine passion for beautiful things lodged oddly in some chink of his common and Philistine personality.“I have the refusal then—for twenty-four hours?” he said curtly.Falloden nodded, wrote him a statement to that effect, ordered whisky and soda, and saw them safely to their carriage.Then pacing slowly through the rooms, he went back towards the library. His mind was divided between a kind of huckster’s triumph and a sense of intolerable humiliation. All around him were the “tribal signs” of race, continuity, history—which he had taken for granted all his life. But now that a gulf had opened between him and them, his heart clung to them consciously for the first time. No good! He felt himself cast out—stripped—exposed. The easy shelter fashioned for him and his by the lives of generations of his kindred had fallen in fragments about him.“Well—I never earned it!”—he said to himself bitterly, turning in disgust on his own self-pity.When he reached the library he found his father walking up and down deep in thought. He looked up as his son entered.“Well, that saves the bankruptcy, Duggy, and—as far as I can see—leaves a few thousands over—portions for the younger children, and what will enable you to turn round.”Douglas assented silently. After a long look at his son, Sir Arthur opened a side door which led from the library into the suite of drawing-rooms. Slowly he passed through them, examining the pictures steadily, one by one. At the end of the series, he turned and came back again to his own room, with a bent head and meditative step. Falloden followed him.In the library, Sir Arthur suddenly straightened himself.“Duggy, do you hate me—for the mess I’ve made—of your inheritance?”The question stirred a quick irritation in Falloden. It seemed to him futile and histrionic; akin to all those weaknesses in his father which had brought them disaster.“I don’t think you need ask me that,” he said, rather sharply, as he opened a drawer in his father’s writing-table, and locked up the paper containing Herr Schwarz’s offer.Sir Arthur looked at him wistfully.“You’ve been a brick, Duggy—since I told you. I don’t know that I had any right to count upon it.”“What else could I do?” said Douglas, trying to laugh, but conscious—resenting it—of a swelling in the throat.“You could have given a good many more twists to the screw—if you’d been a different sort,” said his father slowly. “And you’re a tough customer, Duggy, to some people. But to me”—He paused, beginning again in another tone—“Duggy, don’t be offended with me—but did you ever want to marry Lady Constance Bledlow? You wrote to me about her at Christmas.”Douglas gave a rather excited laugh.“It’s rather late in the day to ask me that question.”His father eyed him.“You mean she refused you?”His son nodded.“Before this collapse?”“Before she knew anything about it”“Poor old Duggy!” said his father, in a low voice. “But perhaps—after all—she’ll think better of it. By all accounts she has the charm of her mother, whom Risborough married to please himself and not his family.”Falloden said nothing. He wished to goodness his father would drop the subject. Sir Arthur understood he was touching things too sore to handle, and sighed.“Well, shake hands, Duggy, old boy. You carried this thing through splendidly to-day. But it seems to have taken it out of me—which isn’t fair. I shall go for a little walk. Tell your mother I shall be back in an hour or so.”The son took his father’s hand. The strong young grasp brought a momentary sense of comfort to the older man. They eyed each other, both pale, both conscious of feelings to which it was easier to give no voice. Then their hands dropped. Sir Arthur looked for his hat and stick, which were lying near, and went out of the open glass door into the garden. He passed through the garden into the park beyond walking slowly and heavily, his son’s eyes following him.
Douglas Falloden rode home rapidly after parting from Connie. Passion, impatience, bitter regret consumed him. He suffered, and could not endure to suffer. That life, which had grown up with him as a flattering and obsequious friend, obeying all his whims, yielding to all his desires, should now have turned upon him in this traitorous way, inflicting such monstrous reprisals and rebuffs, roused in him the astonishment and resentment natural to such a temperament.
He, too, drew rein for a moment at the spot where Connie had looked out over Flood Castle and its valley. The beautiful familiar sight produced in him now only a mingling of pain and irritation. The horrid thing was settled, decided. There was no avoiding ruin, or saving his inheritance. Then why these long delays, these endless discomforts and humiliations? The lawyers prolonged things because it paid them to do so; and his poor father wavered and hesitated from day to day, because physically and morally he was breaking up. If only his father and mother would have cleared out of Flood at once—they were spending money they could not possibly afford in keeping it up—and had left him, Douglas, to do the odious things, pay the creditors, sell the place, and sweep up the whole vast mess, with the help of the lawyers, it would have been infinitely best. His own will felt itself strong and determined enough for any such task. But Sir Arthur, in his strange, broken state, could not be brought to make decisions, and would often, after days of gloom and depression, pass into a fool’s mood, when he seemed for the moment to forget and ignore the whole tragedy. Since he and Douglas had agreed with the trustees to sell the pictures, that sheer bankruptcy might just be escaped, Sir Arthur had been extravagantly cheerful. Why not have their usual shooting-party after all?—one last fling before the end! He supposed he should end his days in a suburban villa, but till they left Flood the flag should be kept flying.
During all this time of tension indeed, he was a great trial to his son. Douglas’s quick and proud intelligence was amazed to find his father so weak and so incompetent under misfortune. All his boyish life he had looked up to the slender, handsome man, whom he himself so much resembled, on a solider, more substantial scale, as the most indulgent of fathers, the princeliest of hosts, the best of shots and riders, chief indeed of the Falloden clan and all its glories, who, like other monarchs, could do no wrong.
But now the glamour which must always attend the central figure of such a scene withered at the touch of poverty and misfortune. And, in its absence, Douglas found himself dealing with an enthusiastic, vain, self-confident being, who had ruined himself and his son by speculations, often so childishly foolish that Douglas could not think of them without rage. Intellectually, he could only despise and condemn his father.
Yet the old bond held. Till he met Constance Bledlow, he had cared only for his own people, and among them, preëminently, for his father. In this feeling, family pride and natural affection met together. The family pride had been sorely shaken, the affection, steeped in a painful, astonished pity, remained. For the first time in his life Douglas had been sleeping badly. Interminable dreams pursued him, in which the scene in Marmion quad, his last walk with Constance along the Cherwell, and the family crash, were all intermingled, with the fatuity natural to dreams. And his wakings from them were almost equally haunted by the figures of Constance and Radowitz, and by a miserable yearning over his father, which no one who saw his hard, indifferent bearing during the day could possible have guessed. “Poor—poor old fellow!”—he had once or twice raised himself from his bed in the early morning, as though answering this cry in his ears, only to find that he himself had uttered it.
He had told his people nothing of Constance Bledlow beyond the bare fact of his acquaintance with her, first at Cannes, and then at Oxford. And they knew nothing of the Radowitz incident. Very few people indeed were aware of the true history of that night which had marred an artist’s life. The college authorities had been painfully stirred by the reports which had reached them; but Radowitz himself had written to the Head maintaining that the whole thing was an accident and a frolic, and insisting that no public or official notice should be taken of it, a fact which had not prevented the Head from writing severely to Falloden, Meyrick, and Robertson, or the fellows of the college from holding a college meeting, even in the long vacation, to discuss what measures should be taken in the October term to put down and stamp out ragging.
Falloden had replied to the Head’s letter expressing his “profound regret” for the accident to Otto Radowitz, and declaring that nobody in the row had the smallest intention of doing him any bodily harm.
What indeed had anybody but himself to do with his own malignant and murderous impulse towards Radowitz? It had had no casual connection whatever with the accident itself. And who but he—and Constance Bledlow—was entitled to know that, while the others were actuated by nothing but the usual motives of a college rag, quickened by too much supping, he himself had been impelled by a mad jealousy of Radowitz, and a longing to humiliate one who had humiliated him? All the same he hated himself now for what he had said to Constance on their last walk. It had been a mean and monstrous attempt to shift the blame from his own shoulders to hers; and his sense of honour turned from the recollection of it in disgust.
How pale she had looked, beside that gate, in the evening light—how heavy-eyed! No doubt she was seeing Radowitz constantly, and grieving over him; blaming herself, indeed, as he, Falloden, had actually invited her to do. With fresh poignancy, he felt himself an outcast from her company. No doubt they sometimes talked of him—his bitter pride guessed how!—she, and Sorell, and Radowitz together. Was Sorell winning her? He had every chance. Falloden, in his sober senses, knew perfectly well that she was not in love with Radowitz; though no one could say what pity might do with a girl so sensitive and sympathetic.
Well, it was all over!—no good thinking about it. He confessed to himself that his whole relation to Constance Bledlow had been one blunder from beginning to end. His own arrogance and self-confidence with regard to her, appeared to him, as he looked back upon them, not so much a fault as an absurdity. In all his dealings with her he had been a conceited fool, and he had lost her. “But I had to be ruined to find it out!” he thought, capable at last of some ironic reflection on himself.
He set his horse to a gallop along the moorland turf. Let him get home, and do his dreary tasks in that great house which was already becoming strange to him; which, in a sense, he was now eager to see the last of. On the morrow, the possible buyer of the pictures—who, by the way, was not an American at all, but a German shipping millionaire from Bremen—was coming down, with an “expert.” Hang the expert! Falloden, who was to deal with the business, promised himself not to be intimidated by him, or his like; and amid his general distress and depression, his natural pugnacity took pleasure in the thought of wrestling with the pair.
When he rode up to the Flood gateway everything appeared as usual. The great lawns in front of the house were as immaculately kept as ever, and along the shrubberies which bordered the park there were gardeners still at work pegging down a broad edge of crimson rambler roses, which seemed to hold the sunset. Falloden observed them. “Who’s paying for them?” he thought. At the front door two footmen received him; the stately head butler stood with a detached air in the background.
“Sir Arthur’s put off dinner half an hour, sir. He’s in the library.”
Douglas went in search of his father. He found him smoking and reading a novel, apparently half asleep.
“You’re very late, Duggy. Never mind. We’ve put off dinner.”
“I found Sprague had a great deal to say.”
Sprague was the subagent living on the further edge of the estate. Douglas had spent the day with him, going into the recent valuation of an important group of farms.
“I dare say,” said Sir Arthur, lying back in his armchair. “I’m afraid I don’t want to hear it.”
Douglas sat down opposite his father. He was dusty and tired, and there were deep pits tinder his eyes.
“It will make a difference of a good many thousands to us, father, if that valuation is correct,” he said shortly.
“Will it? I can’t help it. I can’t go into it. I can’t keep the facts and figures in my head, Duggy. I’ve done too much of them this last ten years. My brain gives up. But you’ve got a splendid head, Duggy—wonderful for your age. I leave it to you, my son. Do the best you can.”
Douglas looked at his father a moment in silence. Sir Arthur was sitting near the window, and had just turned on an electric light beside him. Douglas was struck by something strange in his father’s attitude and look—a curious irresponsibility and remoteness. The deep depression of their earlier weeks together had apparently disappeared. This mood of easy acquiescence—almost levity—was becoming permanent. Yet Douglas could not help noticing afresh the physical change in a once splendid man—how shrunken his father was, and how grey. And he was only fifty-two. But the pace at which he had lived for years, first in the attempt to double his already great wealth by adventures all over the world, and latterly in his frantic efforts to escape the consequences of these adventures, had rapidly made an old man of him. The waste and pity—and at the same time the irreparableness of it all—sent a shock, intolerably chill and dreary, through the son’s consciousness. He was too young to bear it patiently. He hastily shook it off.
“Those picture chaps are coming to-morrow,” he said, as he got up, meaning to go and dress.
Sir Arthur put his hands behind his head, and didn’t reply immediately. He was looking at a picture on the panelled wall opposite, on which the lingering western glow still shone through the mullioned window on his right. It was an enchanting Romney—a young woman in a black dress holding a spaniel in her arms. The picture breathed a distinction, a dignity beyond the reach of Romney’s ordinary mood. It represented Sir Arthur’s great-grandmother, on his father’s side, a famous Irish beauty of the day.
“Wonder what they’ll give me for that,” he Said quietly, pointing to it. “My father always said it was the pick. You remember the story that she—my great-grandmother—once came across Lady Hamilton in Romney’s studio, and Emma Hamilton told Romney afterwards that at last he’d found a sitter handsomer than herself. It’s a winner. You inherit her eyes, Douglas, and her colour. What’s it worth?”
“Twenty thousand perhaps.” Douglas’s voice had the cock-sureness that goes with new knowledge. “I’ve been looking into some of the recent prices.”
“Twenty thousand!” said Sir Arthur, musing. “And Romney got seventy-five for it, I believe—I have the receipt somewhere. I shall miss that picture. What shall I get for it? A few shabby receipts—for nothing. My creditors will get something out of her—mercifully. But as for me—I might as well have cut her into strips. She looks annoyed—as though she knew I’d thrown her away. I believe she was a vixen.”
“I must go and change, father,” said Douglas.
“Yes, yes, dear boy, go and change. Douglas, you think there’ll be a few thousands over, don’t you, besides your mother’s settlement, when it’s all done?”
“Precious few,” said Douglas, pausing on his way to the door. “Don’t count upon anything, father. If we do well to-morrow, there may be something.”
“Four or five thousand?—ten, even? You know, Duggy, many men have built up fortunes again on no more. A few weeks ago I had all sorts of ideas.”
“That’s no good,” said Douglas, with emphasis. “For God’s sake, father, don’t begin again.”
Sir Arthur nodded silently, and Douglas left the room.
His father remained sitting where his son had left him, his fingers drumming absently on the arms of his chair, his half-shut eyes wandering over the splendid garden outside, with its statues and fountains, and its masses of roses, all fused in the late evening glow.
The door opened softly. His wife came in.
Lady Laura had lost her old careless good humour. Her fair complexion had changed for the worse; there were lines in her white forehead, and all her movements had grown nervous and irritable. But her expression as she stood by her husband was one of anxious though rather childish affection.
“How are you, Arthur? Did you get a nap?”
“A beauty!” said her husband, smiling at her, and taking her hand. “I dreamt about Raby, and the first time I saw you there in the old Duke’s day. What a pretty thing you were, Laura!—like a monthly rose, all pink.”
He patted her hand; Lady Laura shrugged her shoulders rather pettishly.
“It’s no good thinking about that now.... You’re not really going to have a shooting-party, Arthur? I do wish you wouldn’t!”
“But of course I am!” said her husband, raising himself with alacrity. “The grouse must be shot, and the estate is not sold yet! I’ve asked young Meyrick, and Lord Charles, and Robert Vere. You can ask the Charlevilles, dear, and if my lady doesn’t come I shan’t break my heart. Then there are five or six of the neighbours of course. And no whining and whimpering! The last shoot at Flood shall be a good one! The keeper tells me the birds are splendid!”
Lady Laura’s lips trembled.
“You forget what Duggy and I shall be feeling all the time, Arthur. It’s very hard on us.”
“No—nonsense!” The voice was good-humouredly impatient. “Take it calmly, dear. What do places matter? Come to the Andes with me. Duggy must work for his fellowship; Nelly can stay with some of our relations; and we can send the children to school. Or what do you say to a winter in California? Let’s have a second honeymoon—see something of the world before we die. This English country gentleman business ties one terribly. Life in one’s own house is so jolly one doesn’t want anything else. But now, if we’re going to be uprooted, let’s enjoy it!”
“Enjoy it!” repeated his wife bitterly. “How can you say such things, Arthur?”
She walked to the window, and stood looking out at the garden with its grandiose backing of hill and climbing wood, and the strong broken masses of the cedar trees—the oldest it was said in England—which flanked it on either side. Lady Laura was, in truth, only just beginning to realise their misfortunes. It had seemed to her impossible that such wealth as theirs should positively give out; that there should be nothing left but her miserable two thousand a year; that something should not turn up to save them from this preposterous necessity of leaving Flood. When Douglas came home, she had thrown herself on her clever son, confident that he would find a way out, and his sombre verdict on the hopelessness of the situation had filled her with terror. How could they live with nothing but the London house to call their own? How could they? Why couldn’t they sell off the land, and keep the house and the park? Then they would still be the Fallodens of Flood. It was stupid—simply stupid—to be giving up everything like this.
So day by day she wearied her husband and son by her lamentations, which were like those of some petted animal in distress. And every now and then she had moments of shrinking terror—of foreboding—fearing she knew not what. Her husband seemed to her changed. Why wouldn’t he take her advice? Why wouldn’t Douglas listen to her? If only her father had been alive, or her only brother, they could have helped her. But she had nobody—nobody—and Arthur and Douglas would do this horrible thing.
Her husband watched her, half smiling—his shrunken face flushed, his eyes full of a curious excitement. She had grown stout in the last five years, poor Laura!—she had lost her youth before the crash came. But she was still very pleasant to look upon, with her plentiful fair hair, and her pretty mouth—her instinct for beautiful dress—and her soft appealing manner. He suddenly envisaged her in black—with a plain white collar and cuffs, and something white on her hair. Then vehemently shaking off his thought he rose and went to her.
“Dear—didn’t Duggy want you to ask somebody for the shoot? I thought I heard him mention somebody?’
“That was ages ago. He doesn’t want anybody asked now,” said Lady Laura resentfully. “He can’t understand why you want a party.”
“I thought he said something about Lady Constance Bledlow?”
“That was in June!” cried Lady Laura. “He certainly wouldn’t let me ask her, as things are.”
“Have you any idea whether he may have wanted to marry her?”
“He was very much taken with her. But how can he think about marrying, Arthur? You do say the strangest things. And after Dagnall’s behaviour too.”
“Raison de plus!That girl has money, my dear, and will have more, when the old aunts depart this life. If you want Duggy still to go into Parliament, and to be able to do anything for the younger ones, you’ll keep an eye on her.”
Lady Laura, however, was too depressed to welcome the subject. The gong rang for dinner, and as they were leaving the room, Sir Arthur said—
“There are two men coming down to-morrow to see the pictures, Laura. If I were you, I should keep out of the way.”
She gave him a startled look. But they were already on the threshold of the dining-room, where a butler and two footmen waited. The husband and wife took their places opposite each other in the stately panelled room, which contained six famous pictures. Over the mantelpiece was a half-length Gainsborough, one of the loveliest portraits in the world, a miracle of shining colour and languid grace, the almond eyes with their intensely black pupils and black eyebrows looking down, as it seemed, contemptuously upon this after generation, so incurably lacking in its own supreme refinement. Opposite Lady Laura was a full-length Van Dyck of the Genoese period, a mother in stiff brocade and ruff, with an adorable child at her knee; and behind her chair was the great Titian of the house, a man in armour, subtle and ruthless as the age which bred him, his hawk’s eye brooding on battles past, and battles to come, while behind him stretched the Venetian lagoon, covered dimly with the fleet of the great republic which had employed him. Facing the Gainsborough hung one of Cuyp’s few masterpieces—a mass of shipping on the Scheldt, with Dordrecht in the background. For play and interplay of everything that delights the eye—light and distance, transparent water, and hovering clouds, the lustrous brown of fishing boats, the beauty of patched sails and fluttering flags—for both literary and historic suggestion, Dutch art had never done better. Impressionists and post-impressionists came down occasionally to stay at Flood—for Sir Arthur liked to play Mæcenas—and were allowed to deal quite frankly with the pictures, as they wandered round the room at dessert, cigarette in hand, pointing out the absurdities of the Cuyp and the Titian. Their host, who knew that he possessed in that room what the collectors of two continents desired, who felt them buzzing outside like wasps against a closed window, took a special pleasure in the scoffs of the advanced crew. They supplied an agreeable acid amid a general adulation that bored him.
To-night the presence of the pictures merely increased the excitement which was the background of his mind. He talked about them a good deal at dinner, wondering secretly all the time, what it would be like to do without them—without Flood—without his old butler there—without everything.
Douglas came down late, and was very silent and irresponsive. He too was morbidly conscious of the pictures, though he wished his father wouldn’t talk about them. He was conscious of everything that meant money—of his mother’s pearls for instance, which she wore every evening without thinking about them. If he did well with the pictures on the morrow she might, perhaps, justly keep them, as a dowry for Nelly. But if not—He found himself secretly watching his mother, wondering how she would take it all when she really understood—what sort of person she would turn out to be in the new life to which they were all helplessly tending.
After dinner, he followed his father into the smoking room.
“Where is the catalogue of the pictures, father?”
“In the library, Duggy, to the right hand of the fire-place. I paid a fellow a very handsome sum for making it—a fellow who knew a lot—a real expert. But, of course, when we published it, all the other experts tore it to pieces.”
“If I bring it, will you go through it with me?”
Sir Arthur shrugged his shoulders.
“I don’t think I will, Duggy. The catalogue—there are a great many marginal notes on it which the published copies haven’t got—will tell you all I know about them, and a great deal more. And you’ll find a loose paper at the beginning, on which I’ve noted down the prices people have offered me for them from time to time. Like their impudence, I used to think! I leave it to you, old boy. I know it’s a great responsibility for a young fellow like you. But the fact is—I’m pumped. Besides, when they make their offer, we can talk it over. I think I’ll go and play a game of backgammon with your mother.”
He threw away his cigar, and Douglas, angry at what seemed to him his father’s shirking, stood stiffly aside to let him pass. Sir Arthur opened the door. He seemed to walk uncertainly, and he stooped a great deal. From the hall outside, he looked back at his son.
“I think I shall see M’Clintock next time I’m in town, Duggy. I’ve had some queer pains across my chest lately.”
“Indigestion?” said Douglas. His tone was casual.
“Perhaps. Oh, they’re nothing. But it’s best to take things in time.”
He walked away, leaving his son in a state of seething irritation. Extraordinary that a man could think of trumpery ailments at such a time! It was unlike his father too, whose personal fitness and soundness, whether on the moors, in the hunting field, or in any other sort of test, had always been triumphantly assumed by his family, as part of the general brilliance of Sir Arthur’s role in life.
Douglas sombrely set himself to study the picture catalogue, and sat smoking and making notes till nearly midnight. Having by that time accumulated a number of queries to which answers were required, he went in search of his father. He found him in the drawing-room, still playing backgammon with Lady Laura.
“Oh Duggy, I’m so tired!” cried his mother plaintively, as soon as he appeared. “And your father will go on. Do come and take my place.”
Sir Arthur rose.
“No, no, dear—we’ve had enough. Many thanks. If you only understood its points, backgammon is really an excellent game. Well, Duggy, ready to go to bed?”
“When I’ve asked you a few questions, father.”
Lady Laura escaped, having first kissed her son with tearful eyes. Sir Arthur checked a yawn, and tried to answer Douglas’s enquiries. But very soon he declared that he had no more to say, and couldn’t keep awake.
Douglas watched him mounting the famous staircase of the house, with its marvellousrampe, bought under the Bourbon Restoration from one of the historic chateaux of France; and, suddenly, the young man felt his heart gripped. Was that shrunken, stooping figure really his father? Of course they must have M’Clintock at once—and get him away—to Scotland or abroad.
“The two gentlemen are in the red drawing-room, sir!” Douglas and his father were sitting together in the library, after lunch, on the following afternoon, when the butler entered.
“Damn them!” said Sir Arthur under his breath. Then he got up, smiling, as the servant disappeared. “Well, Duggy, now’s your chance. I’m a brute not to come and help you, my boy. But I’ve made such a mess of driving the family coach, you’d really better take a turn. I shall go out for an hour. Then you can come and report to me.”
Douglas went into the red drawing-room, one of the suite of rooms dating from the early seventeenth century which occupied the western front of the house. As he entered, he saw two men at the farther end closely examining a large Constable, of the latest “palette-knife” period, which hung to the left of the fire-place. One of the men was short, very stout, with a fringe of grey hair round his bald head, a pair of very shrewd and sparkling black eyes, a thick nose, full lips, and a double chin. He wore spectacles, and was using in addition, a magnifying glass with which he was examining the picture. Beside him stood a thin, slightly-bearded man, cadaverous in colour, who, with his hands in his pockets, was holding forth in a nonchalant, rather patronising voice.
Both of them turned at Douglas’s entrance, surveying the son of the house with an evident and eager curiosity.
“You are, I suppose, Mr. Douglas Falloden?” said the short man, speaking perfect English, though with a slight German accent. “Your father is not able to see us?”
“My father will be pleased to see you, when you have been the round of the pictures,” said Douglas stiffly. “He deputes me to show you what we have.”
The short man laughed.
“I expect we know what you have almost as well as you. Let me introduce Mr. Miklos.”
Douglas bowed, so did the younger man. He was, as Douglas already knew, a Hungarian by birth, formerly an official in one of the museums of Budapest, then at Munich, and now an “expert” at large, greatly in demand as the adviser of wealthy men entering the field of art collecting, and prepared to pay almost anything for success in one of the most difficult and fascinatingchassesthat exist.
“I see you have given this room almost entirely to English pictures,” said Mr. Miklos politely. “A fine Constable!”—he pointed to the picture they had just been considering—“but not, I think, entirely by the master?”
[Illustration: ]Herr Schwarz was examining a picture with a magnifying glass when Falloden entered
Herr Schwarz was examining a picture with a magnifying glass when Falloden entered
“My great-grandfather bought it from Constable himself,” said Douglas. “It has never been disputed by any one.”
Mr. Miklos did not reply, but he shook his head with a slight smile, and walked away towards a Turner, a fine landscape of the middle period, hanging close to the Constable. He peered into it short-sightedly, with his strong glasses.
“A pity that it has been so badly relined,” he said presently, to Douglas, pointing to it.
“You think so? Its condition is generally thought to be excellent. My father was offered eight thousand for it last year by the Berlin Museum.”
Douglas was now apparently quite at his ease. With his thumbs in the armholes of his white waistcoat, he strolled along beside the two buyers, holding his own with both of them, thanks to his careful study of the materials for the history of the collection possessed by his father. The elder man, a Bremen ship-owner,—one Wilhelm Schwarz—who had lately made a rapid and enormous fortune out of the Argentine trade, and whose chief personal ambition it now was to beat the New York and Paris collectors, in the great picture game, whatever it might cost, was presently forced to take some notice of the handsome curly-headed youth in the perfectly fitting blue serge suit, whose appearance as the vendor, or the vendor’s agent, had seemed to him, at first, merely one more instance of English aristocratic stupidity.
As a matter of fact, Herr Schwarz was simply dazzled by the contents of Flood Castle. He had never dreamt that such virgin treasures still existed in this old England, till Miklos, instructed by the Falloden lawyer, had brought the list of the pictures to his hotel, a few days before this visit. And now he found it extremely difficult to conceal his excitement and delight, or to preserve, in the presence of this very sharp-eyed young heir, the proper “don’t care” attitude of the buyer. He presently left the “running down” business almost entirely to Miklos, being occupied in silent and feverish speculations as to how much he could afford to spend, and a passion of covetous fear lest somehow A——, or Z——, or K——, the leading collectors of the moment, should even yet forestall him, early and “exclusive” as Miklos assured him their information had been.
They passed along through the drawing-rooms, and the whole wonderful series of family portraits, Reynolds’, Lawrences, Gainsboroughs, Romneys, Hoppners, looked down, unconscious of their doom, upon the invaders, and on the son of the house, so apparently unconcerned. But Douglas was very far from unconcerned. He had no artistic gift, and he had never felt or pretended any special interest in the pictures. They were part of Flood, and Flood was the inseparable adjunct of the Falloden race. When his father had first mooted the sale of them, Douglas had assented without much difficulty. If other things went, why not they?
But now that he was in the thick of the business, he found, all in a moment, that he had to set his teeth to see it through. A smarting sense of loss—loss hateful and irreparable, cutting away both the past and the future—burnt deep into his mind, as he followed in the track of the sallow and depreciatory Miklos or watched the podgy figure of Herr Schwarz, running from side to side as picture after picture caught his eye. The wincing salesman saw himself as another Charles Surface; but now that the predicament was his own it was no longer amusing. These fair faces, these mothers and babies of his own blood, these stalwart men, fighters by sea and land, these grave thinkers and churchmen, they thronged about him transformed, become suddenly alien and hostile, a crowd of threatening ghosts, the outraged witnesses of their own humiliation. “For what are you selling us?”—they seemed to say. “Because some one, who was already overfed, must needs grab at a larger mess of pottage—and we must pay! Unkind! degenerate!”
Presently, after the English drawing-rooms, and the library, with its one Romney, came the French room, with its precious Watteaus, its Latours, its two brilliant Nattiers. And here Herr Schwarz’s coolness fairly deserted him. He gave little shrieks of pleasure, which brought a frown to the face of his companion, who was anxious to point out that a great deal of the Watteau was certainly pupil-work, that the Latours were not altogether “convincing” and the Nattiers though extremely pretty, “superficial.” But Herr Schwarz brushed him aside.
“Nein, nein, lieber freund! Dat Nattier is as fine as anything at Potsdam. Dat I must have!” And he gazed in ecstasy at the opulent shoulders, the rounded forms, and gorgeous jewelled dress of an unrivalled Madame de Pompadour, which had belonged to her brother, the Marquis de Marigny.
“You will have all or nothing, my good sir!” thought Falloden, and bided his time.
Meanwhile Miklos, perceiving that his patron was irretrievably landed and considering that his own “expert” dignity had been sufficiently saved, relaxed into enthusiasm and small talk. Only in the later Italian rooms did his critical claws again allow themselves to scratch. A small Leonardo, the treasure of the house, which had been examined and written about by every European student of Milanese art for half a century, was suavely pronounced—
“A Da Predis, of course, but a very nice one!” A Bellini became a Rondinelli; and the names of a dozen obscure, and lately discovered painters, freely applied to the Tintorets, Mantegnas and Cimas on the walls, produced such an effect on Herr Schwarz that he sat down open-mouthed on the central ottoman, staring first at the pictures and then at the speaker; not knowing whether to believe or to doubt. Falloden stood a little apart, listening, a smile on his handsome mouth.
“We should know nothing about Rondinelli,” said Miklos at last, sweetly—“but for the great Bode—”
“Ach, Bode!” said Herr Schwarz, nodding his head in complacent recognition at the name of the already famous assistant-director of the Berlin Museum.
Falloden laughed.
“Dr. Bode was here last year. He told my father he thought the Bellini was one of the finest in existence.”
Miklos changed countenance slightly.
“Bode perhaps is a trifle credulous,” he said in an offended tone.
But he went back again to the Bellini and examined it closely. Falloden, without waiting for his second thoughts, took Herr Schwarz into the dining-room.
At the sight of the six masterpieces hanging on its walls, the Bremen ship-owner again lost his head. What miraculous good-fortune had brought him, ahead of all his rivals, into this still unravaged hive? He ran from side to side,—he grew red, perspiring, inarticulate. At last he sank down on a chair in front of the Titian, and when Miklos approached, delicately suggesting that the picture, though certainly fine, showed traces of one of the later pupils, possibly Molari, in certain parts, Herr Schwarz waved him aside.
“Nein, nein!—Hold your tongue, my dear sir! Here must I judge for myself.”
Then looking up to Falloden who stood beside him, smiling, almost reconciled to the vulgar, greedy little man by his collapse, he said abruptly—
“How much, Mr. Falloden, for your father’s collection?”
“You desire to buy the whole of it?” said Falloden coolly.
“I desire to buy everything that I have seen,” said Herr Schwarz, breathing quickly. “Your solicitors gave me a list of sixty-five pictures. No, no, Miklos, go away!”—he waved his expert aside impatiently.
“Those were the pictures on the ground floor,” said Falloden. “You have seen them all. You had better make your offer in writing, and I will take it to my father.”
He fetched pen and paper from a side-table and put them before the excited German. Herr Schwarz wrinkled his face in profound meditation. His eyes almost disappeared behind his spectacles, then emerged sparkling.
He wrote some figures on a piece of paper, and handed it to Douglas.
Douglas laughed drily, and returned it.
“You will hardly expect me to give my father the trouble of considering that.”
Herr Schwarz puffed and blowed. He got up, and walked about excitedly. He lit a cigarette, Falloden politely helping him. Miklos advanced again.
“I have, myself, made a very careful estimate—” he began, insinuatingly.
“No, no, Miklos,—go away!—go away!” repeated Schwarz impatiently, almost walking over him. Miklos retreated sulkily.
Schwarz took up the paper of figures, made an alteration, and handed it to Falloden.
“It is madness,” he said—“sheer madness. But I have in me something of the poet—the Crusader.”
Falloden’s look of slightly sarcastic amusement, as the little man breathlessly examined his countenance, threw the buyer into despair. Douglas put down the paper.
“We gave you the first chance, Herr Schwarz. As you know, nobody is yet aware of our intentions to sell. But I shall advise my father to-night to let one or two of the dealers know.”
“Ach, lieber Gott!” said Herr Schwarz, and walking away to the window, he stood looking into the rose-garden outside, making a curious whistling sound with his prominent lips, expressive, evidently, of extreme agitation.
Falloden lit another cigarette, and offered one to Miklos.
At the end of two or three minutes, Schwarz again amended the figures on the scrap of paper, and handed it sombrely to Falloden.
“Dat is my last word.”
Falloden glanced at it, and carelessly said—
“On that I will consult my father.”
He left the room.
Schwarz and Miklos looked at each other.
“What airs these English aristocrats give themselves,” said the Hungarian angrily—“even when they are beggars, like this young man!”
Schwarz stood frowning, his hands in his pockets, legs apart. His agitation was calming down, and his more prudent mind already half regretted his impetuosity.
“Some day—we shall teach them a lesson!” he said, under his breath, his eyes wandering over the rose-garden and the deer-park beyond. The rapidly growing docks of Bremen and Hamburg, their crowded shipping, the mounting tide of their business, came flashing into his mind—ran through it in a series of images. This England, with her stored wealth, and her command of the seas—must she always stand between Germany and her desires? He found himself at once admiring and detesting the English scene on which he looked. That so much good German money should have to go into English pockets for these ill-gotten English treasures! What a country to conquer—and to loot!
“And they are mere children compared to us—silly, thick-headed children! Yet they have all the plums—everywhere.”
Falloden came back. The two men turned eagerly.
“My father thanks you for your offer, gentlemen. He is very sorry he is not able to see you as he hoped. He is not very well this afternoon. But I am to say that he will let you have an answer in twenty-four hours. Then if he agrees to your terms, the matter will have to go before the court. That, of course, our lawyers explained to you—”
“That will not suit me at all!” cried Herr Schwarz. “As far as your father is concerned, my offer must be accepted—or rejected—now.”
He struck his open hand on the polished mahogany of the table beside him.
“Then I am very sorry you have had the trouble of coming down,” said Falloden politely. “Shall I order your carriage?”
The great ship-owner stared at him. He was on the point of losing his temper, perhaps of withdrawing from his bargain, when over Falloden’s head he caught sight of the Titian and the play of light on its shining armour; of the Van Dyck opposite. He gave way helplessly; gripped at the same moment by his parvenu’s ambition, and by the genuine passion for beautiful things lodged oddly in some chink of his common and Philistine personality.
“I have the refusal then—for twenty-four hours?” he said curtly.
Falloden nodded, wrote him a statement to that effect, ordered whisky and soda, and saw them safely to their carriage.
Then pacing slowly through the rooms, he went back towards the library. His mind was divided between a kind of huckster’s triumph and a sense of intolerable humiliation. All around him were the “tribal signs” of race, continuity, history—which he had taken for granted all his life. But now that a gulf had opened between him and them, his heart clung to them consciously for the first time. No good! He felt himself cast out—stripped—exposed. The easy shelter fashioned for him and his by the lives of generations of his kindred had fallen in fragments about him.
“Well—I never earned it!”—he said to himself bitterly, turning in disgust on his own self-pity.
When he reached the library he found his father walking up and down deep in thought. He looked up as his son entered.
“Well, that saves the bankruptcy, Duggy, and—as far as I can see—leaves a few thousands over—portions for the younger children, and what will enable you to turn round.”
Douglas assented silently. After a long look at his son, Sir Arthur opened a side door which led from the library into the suite of drawing-rooms. Slowly he passed through them, examining the pictures steadily, one by one. At the end of the series, he turned and came back again to his own room, with a bent head and meditative step. Falloden followed him.
In the library, Sir Arthur suddenly straightened himself.
“Duggy, do you hate me—for the mess I’ve made—of your inheritance?”
The question stirred a quick irritation in Falloden. It seemed to him futile and histrionic; akin to all those weaknesses in his father which had brought them disaster.
“I don’t think you need ask me that,” he said, rather sharply, as he opened a drawer in his father’s writing-table, and locked up the paper containing Herr Schwarz’s offer.
Sir Arthur looked at him wistfully.
“You’ve been a brick, Duggy—since I told you. I don’t know that I had any right to count upon it.”
“What else could I do?” said Douglas, trying to laugh, but conscious—resenting it—of a swelling in the throat.
“You could have given a good many more twists to the screw—if you’d been a different sort,” said his father slowly. “And you’re a tough customer, Duggy, to some people. But to me”—He paused, beginning again in another tone—
“Duggy, don’t be offended with me—but did you ever want to marry Lady Constance Bledlow? You wrote to me about her at Christmas.”
Douglas gave a rather excited laugh.
“It’s rather late in the day to ask me that question.”
His father eyed him.
“You mean she refused you?”
His son nodded.
“Before this collapse?”
“Before she knew anything about it”
“Poor old Duggy!” said his father, in a low voice. “But perhaps—after all—she’ll think better of it. By all accounts she has the charm of her mother, whom Risborough married to please himself and not his family.”
Falloden said nothing. He wished to goodness his father would drop the subject. Sir Arthur understood he was touching things too sore to handle, and sighed.
“Well, shake hands, Duggy, old boy. You carried this thing through splendidly to-day. But it seems to have taken it out of me—which isn’t fair. I shall go for a little walk. Tell your mother I shall be back in an hour or so.”
The son took his father’s hand. The strong young grasp brought a momentary sense of comfort to the older man. They eyed each other, both pale, both conscious of feelings to which it was easier to give no voice. Then their hands dropped. Sir Arthur looked for his hat and stick, which were lying near, and went out of the open glass door into the garden. He passed through the garden into the park beyond walking slowly and heavily, his son’s eyes following him.